IDW Announces New Comics With Jim Steranko, A WATCHMEN Artist’s Edition And More

by Cody "The Thorverine" Ferrell

IDW held a big panel a little earlier today at New York Comic Con, and the publisher announced a few big surprises. Jim Steranko, Darwyn Cooke, Editor-in-chief Chris Ryall, and President and COO Greg Goldstein took the stage to unveil new comics and some impressive Artist’s Editions.

First up in the newly announced Artist’s Edition line is a Charles Schulz Peanuts collection. It will be one of the few horizontal editions released so it can better present the comic strip format of the series. Fans were very excited to hear that Dave Gibbons would be working with IDW for a Watchmen Artist’s Edition. It’s unlike preview collections because it won’t contain full stories due to the art being “scattered to the winds.” It will contain lots of extended sequences and other bonuses to make up for that fact. It will be called an Artifact Edition to better differentiate itself from other Artist’s Editions. This is a new step in IDW‘s partnership with DC Comics. Continuing on that track, a Jack Kirby New Gods Artist’s Edition was revealed. It will feature five issues (2, 5, 6, 7m 8) and a lot of extras. It was approved by the Kirby estate.

Darwyn Cooke will be providing illustrations for new reprints of the Parker prose novels along with the new miniseries he’s working on based on the literary character.

Jim Steranko took the stage late in the game to make a few announcements of his own. He will be putting out a Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Artist’s Edition and a new volume of Nick Fury and Captain America. If Artist’s Edition of his classic work wasn’t enough, Steranko will be working on brand new comics for the publisher. He told a story about being denied by both Marvel and DC. The comics legend said it was a frustrating time, but it resulted in his happy ending with IDW. CBR had a rundown of Steranko’s story:

Steranko told a story of wanting to get back into comics storytelling about five years ago, and calling Marvel President Dan Buckley about doing a Captain America story in “a new comics format that had never been done before.” He then described previous times he’d pioneered new formats. “I find it hard going to sublimate real ideas—I’m not talking about what happens in panels, but the form of comics itself, understand?” he said, noting that the format of comics had remained largely unchanged from the beginning. Steranko said the story would “give them material they could use for ten years, they could pluck it” and use it to inspire further stories. But Buckley at some point said “we have to suspend negotiations right now,” but he’d get back to him after the impending San Diego convention. “Then I got an email from someone I’d never heard from before, saying ‘Your ideas won’t work.'” Steranko considered that the end of the conversation. Speaking later with Dan DiDio at DC, Steranko said DiDio didn’t want him on Batman because it was already selling, so Steranko pitched him on Superman, again in a new format. “A new take on Superman, and he liked that. He said, ‘Can you give us something we could use and pick for the next ten, twenty years?’ I think I can do that,” Steranko said. But Steranko said DiDio wasn’t interested in the new format but wanted standard comic pages. “I’ve already done that,” Steranko said. “And he said, ‘I can’t do that, goodbye.'”

This segued into “the happy ending.” “There’s this company, IDW, they’re willing to take risks,” Steranko said. “I love being on the edge. And if it fails, I don’t really care–what’s important is I did my best.”

So Jim Steranko will be telling stories in a new format on an as-of-yet unannounced series. That’s big considering how Steranko has taken over Twitter in the last few months. Artist’s Edition fans have a lot to be happy about as well. What do you think about IDW‘s announcements?

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